HEADLINE: Influential Connecticut
Welfare Plan Is Tested in Hard Times
BYLINE: By STEPHANIE FLANDERS
BODY: Six years after Connecticut began one of the
nation's more aggressive welfare reform efforts, the number of people on
public assistance has been cut by more than half, to 25,000 from 58,000. Over
the full six years, about 60,000 families have moved off the rolls, and state
officials and researchers say that many of those former recipients have found
work.
The state, which began its effort a year before
the 1996 national welfare reform legislation was adopted, used a new
financial incentive for those who found work and short but flexible time limits
to achieve what even its critics regard as something of a success.
But across the six years, as was true in many other
states, Connecticut's welfare experiment was blessed by a helpful
constellation of economic stars: a booming economy, a growing state budget
surplus and a steady flow of federal welfare dollars all made it easier
for people to leave the rolls and easier for the state to be relaxed about
families who needed more time to adjust.
Now, however,
Connecticut is confronting the question that has hung over the national
welfare reform effort since it began: Can success in moving people off
the rolls be sustained when the economy weakens and federal money for long-term
welfare recipients begins to dry up?
Against a
darkening economic backdrop, Connecticut this year had the first major wrangle
over its budget since 1991. Fears about declining tax revenues led to an
unexpected scramble to limit spending, and Gov. John G. Rowland and legislators
ended up cutting into the state's welfare budget for savings.
New legislation, as a result, has hardened the state's
time limits on welfare benefits and has made it more difficult for people
to qualify for extended support. There will also be tougher penalties for people
who do not comply with work requirements or other welfare rules. These
changes are expected to bring budget savings of around $28 million over the next
two years, largely by a quicker shrinking of the rolls.
State officials argue that the changes are modest; the goal, they say,
is simply to re-emphasize some of the tough-love principles of reform.
"The changes that the governor put forward were to try to
fine-tune what we already thought was a good program," said Patricia A.
Wilson-Coker, the state's commissioner of social services. "It's a continuation
of moving people forward and recognizing they're better off for having done
so."
But to others, including people directly involved
in the variety of welfare-to-work programs under way across Connecticut,
the state's action amounts to the retreat from ambitious thinking that they
predicted would occur at the first sign of tougher economic times.
"I find it unconscionable," said Shelley Geballe, an
official with Connecticut Voices for Children, a New Haven organization that
works with welfare recipients. "The changes will stop benefits for people
on welfare who are playing by the rules, and cut programs that help
low-wage working families. The safety nets and the bootstrap parts of the system
are both being cut."
The biggest changes relate to the
state time limit, the 21-month cap on benefits that was one of the shortest in
the nation when it was instituted in 1995. But in practice, the limits had been
only loosely enforced, and officials could grant extensions in benefits to
anyone who was making a "good faith effort" to comply with the
welfare-to-work program. Around 40 percent, or nearly 4,800 of the
families now on welfare, have had their benefits extended beyond the
formal time limit.
Under the new rules, most families
will not be able to obtain extensions after they have been on welfare for
a total of 39 months unless they can show that their efforts to find work have
been hampered by severe mental or physical problems or learning
disabilities. To push people toward their deadlines faster, the state has
also ruled that a single day on welfare in a given month will be
officially counted as a month.
For all the tough
initial talk by Connecticut officials -- short time limits and reduced benefits
to newcomers -- the state has become known for the more generous aspects of its
programs, particularly the earnings incentive it extended to people to mix
welfare and work.
Before 1995, Connecticut
residents on welfare could not earn very much outside income without
triggering cuts in their weekly welfare check -- as is still the case in
most states. But in its welfare reforms, Connecticut opted to let
recipients earn appreciable amounts of outside income and still receive their
full welfare allotment, at least for the first 21 months.
The theory behind the earnings incentive was that by making it less
risky for people on welfare to take jobs, the state could increase the
chance that they might eventually find steady work. By all accounts, the program
paid off, helping to move thousands from welfare to work, especially
people with little education or experience who would usually find it hardest to
find a job.
A three-year study of welfare reform
in Connecticut by the Manpower Development Resource Corporation, an independent
research organization, tracked people on welfare in the new system
alongside a randomly selected group that was still operating on the pre-1996
welfare rules. It found that employment among people with little job
experience and no high school diploma was nearly 40 percent higher under the new
rules.
To be sure, the state's welfare reforms
have had their critics among advocates for the poor, who pointed out that the
people in the study who had moved out of welfare had not seen any lasting
increase in income. But from the standpoint of state officials, the increase in
employment, by itself, marked an important victory.
"We
have to remember that the goal of the reform program was not to get people out
of poverty, but to achieve financial independence, to get off welfare," a
senior state official said.
And for those families who
reached the 21-month time limit without finding a steady job, even the critics
agree that there was usually a second chance.
"When
welfare reform was originally introduced, there wasn't much talk about
extensions," said the Rev. Bonita Grubbs, director of Christian Community
Action, a nonprofit organization that provides support for the homeless in New
Haven. "As legislative sessions came and went, we saw a softening of the policy
to allow for individuals to get extensions if they could show they were working
or looking for work."
As in other states, relaxed
enforcement of the time limit helped protect the state against the charge that
families were being thrown onto the street.
Until this
year's budget debate, it had also helped to postpone a debate about how to
handle the families who did not leave the rolls.
Now,
583 families, or just more than 2 percent of households on welfare, are
on course to reach the federal five-year limit by October. If the state's rules
for extending welfare benefits had not been changed, there was a strong
possibility that the families would stay on welfare beyond five years,
and the cost of their benefits might have to be met by the state.
With an eye on the weakening economy, Governor Rowland and
legislators agreed that a tightening of the state time limits was overdue.
For officials, the changes make good on the founding
principles of the reform: that welfare should be temporary and not a way
of life. But to critics, the new budget has the state spending less to help
people move from welfare to work at just the time when it ought to be
spending more, because the remaining families are likely to be those who are
least able to find jobs.
Stephen Ristau, president of
the Connecticut Council of Family Service Agencies, which runs the state's
safety net programs, said the tougher sanctions raise the prospect that for the
first time, people who have been actively looking for work will be cut off.
Just over half of the heads of households approaching the
five-year deadline are working. Average earnings among this group are about $105
per week, part of which would usually be deducted from their welfare
benefits, typically $540 a month for a family of three.
In addition to this group, there are roughly 1,500 families, many of
whom are working, who are not yet facing the federal deadline, but who could be
cut from the rolls as a result of the state's tougher time limits.
"We all wonder what's going to happen to these people,
particularly the ones who have had the most problems finding work," said State
Senator Mary Ann Handley, who co-chairs the General Assembly's Human Services
Committee. "If you can't find work in this kind of economy, you must have a
massive problem."
For Ms. Grubbs, these worries are a
natural consequence of the state's earlier, more hands-off approach to moving
people off welfare. "The whole emphasis was to push people into getting
jobs, and there were a lot of people who actually went to work because they were
job-ready and they had skills, and that was fine," she said. "But with that kind
of emphasis, a lot of other things get discounted. You end up with a number of
people at the bottom of the triangle who have many, many more challenges."
Ms. Wilson-Coker, the state social services commissioner,
argues that the budget leaves plenty of room to respond to those challenges as
they arise. In principle, a variety of health and family support programs, along
with other noncash support, will be available to people whose benefits expire
after October.
Under the rules adopted by the
legislature, people will also be able to keep their benefits after 39 months if
they have two or more serious barriers to employment, like drug
addiction, severe learning disabilities and mental or physical health
problems. And any teenage mothers on welfare will be exempt from work
requirements and required to go to school.
But, as in
other states where recipients are approaching the five-year federal limit, many
are concerned that just as the demand for real investment in moving the deeply
troubled into work is increasing, budget revenues are starting to decline.
One of the casualties of the budget deal, for instance,
was a $1 million pilot program to provide work-study stipends to welfare
recipients who were trying to go back to school.
"There
are a lot of support programs in place here that don't exist in other places:
that's the good news for Connecticut," Mr. Ristau said. "The question is: do we
have the resources for the second phase of welfare reform and are we
willing to commit them to the kind of programs that the hardest-to-serve
families may need? The answer coming out of this year's budget debate seems to
be: 'not now.' "
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GRAPHIC: Chart:
"PROFILE: Connecticut's Welfare Families" A look at the 583
families who are nearing the time limit on welfare benefits. All data are
for head of the household.
Are working part- or
full-time -- 51% Are not working at all -- 49%
Have no high school diploma -- 57% Have a G.E.D. or have
attend-ed college -- 43%
Are 30 or older --
82% Are younger than 30 -- 18%
Speak
English as a first language -- 83% Speak Spanish* -- 16%
*Other language not shown (Source:
Department of Social Services)(pg. B6)
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